National report 2005

NEMO Annual meeting Manchester, UK

THE NORWEGIAN MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION

The Norwegian Museums Association represents the interests of 235 museums of all kinds; from large national and university museums to smaller local ones. We also have 270 personal members, but only the museums can vote at our general Assembly. The Association is also secretariat for The Norwegian national commitee of ICOM. The organisation actively lobbies museum concerns in the government, especially in The Ministry of Culture and in the media.

A national reform of museums

The Norwegian museums are engaged in a national reform of the museums’ administrative and organising structure. This is as a result of an own parliamentary report of archives, libraries and museums from 1999.

The museums are supposed to consolidate into fewer administrative units country wide. In 2001 almost 300 museums were financially supported by the government. This year this number has dropped to about 100, as museums had joined forces during this consolidation process. The Ministry of Culture has decided that networking will not be enough, the several museums will have to join together as one single organisation with a joint administration. This means that the process is a quite strong centralisation process. But altogether we are quite happy about the intention of increasing the grants to the museums with about 30 millions of Euro over the years. At the budget of the state for 2006, the museums will get an increase of about 8 millions Euro, after two bad years.

Some important museums are supported by other Ministries, for example the museums of the universities. The Lappish museums are under the Parliament of the Lappish, and have their own reform.

A parliamentary report of culture

Last year The Parliament discussed a parliamentary report of culture from the government, which they usually do approximately every 10th year. The museums have an important role in reporting, and thus we were also quite satisfied with the recommendation from The Parliament.

A parliamentary report of cultural heritage

In Norway The Ministry of Environment - and not The Ministry of Culture - is the responsible Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The 2 Ministries - of Environment and Culture - have usually some problem to cooperate about issues of the cultural heritage and the roles of museums.

The Government presented an own parliamentary report of Cultural Heritage just before Christmas last year, and The Parliament discussed the report this summer.

The general assembly

This year Norway has celebrated that we got rid of the union with Sweden 100 years ago. When we are together with our close Swedish neighbours: We usually say that we mark the occasion, and not celebrate… Therefore we moved our general assembly to Sweden this year, and had a common meeting together with our Swedish colleagues. We also had a few representatives from Denmark. We have also challenged the new Danish museums association to organise a similar common Nordic assembly in the coming years.

Tron Wigeland Nilsen